The Lewis & Clark Baseball League, or LCBL, was a collegiate summer baseball league comprising teams of the top college players from the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area and beyond. Founded by Nicholas R. A. Mahrt in 2013, the amateur baseball league ran annually from June through early August. It was a non-profit organization and a charter member of the Commonwealth Leagues United a nationwide collection of baseball leagues that emphasize student-athlete summer work/study opportunities. Players were not paid, so as to maintain their college eligibility and amateur status; their ages ranged from 18 to 23. The league folded prior to the 2017 season.
About the league Players chose to exclusively compete during the week or on the weekends, breaking the teams into two conferences, the Lewis Conference and the Clark Conference, each consisting of six teams in two divisions. Teams were scheduled to play 36 games over an eight-week season, culminating in an early August playoff. The playoffs consisted of a best-of-three Corps of Discovery Cup Series, matching the two division winners in the Lewis Conference and the two in the Clark Conference. After the best of the weekend and weekday were crowned, the conference champions met in a one-game, winner-take-all title game. The current league champions, the winners of the 2014 Corps of Discovery Cup, are the Voyagers.
Miller Orthopedics served as the platinum sponsor for the Lewis and Clark Baseball League. There were opportunities for individuals to seek sponsors, internal positions with the LCBL (field and gameday operations), and part-time employment/internships with local companies. Players who played exclusively on the weekend (Lewis Conference) could maintain a 40-hour per week schedule and still play in all of their team's games.
Player registration annually opened in November of the previous year, which began the official recruitment period, where student-athletes could commit to playing with a particular LCBL team. The league grew from an initial four teams to eight, and reached its peak expansion of 14 teams in 2016.
Origin In the summer of 2012, Nicholas Mahrt, then-assistant coach for Washington University in St. Louis, coached in the St. Louis Metro League. His participation with that particular organization left him dissatisfied with the local product that was being offered. Mahrt noticed the Metro League model lacked an opportunity for college players to pursue both aspects of their college experience. Due to a schedule that was loaded with games on weekdays and weekends, student-athletes in other leagues were ultimately forced to choose between baseball and a summer job/internship. By playing in summer leagues, young adults would thereby forgo a chance to enhance their post-collegiate careers by gaining professional experience. At the same time, declining an invitation in order to gain knowledge and collect a summer paycheck meant college players had to forgo sharpening their baseball skills.
With that mindset, Mahrt set out to create a new product, to address a need for balance between sports league and continuing education:
For Mahrt, the level of talent that the Metro League attracts only widened the work/play disconnect. For nearly all league players, the finality of their senior year was also the end of their competitive playing days. Since a negligible percentage of student-athletes make a future living off playing baseball, most need their last collegiate summer months to build a resume. Mahrt never advocated that 20-year-olds "give up" baseball in lieu of work experience. In fact, he firmly stated that the summer should be used as an instructional period for all to reach their sports pinnacle. His new league simply sought a way to provide better balance to each player's offseason schedule.
The result was a brainstorming session about the creation of a new league. Mahrt and fellow Wash. U. assistant coach W. Ross Clites threw out ideas for a league that would operate as two separate entities. One "conference" would play its games strictly on Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays. This would present players with an opportunity to commute to St. Louis, if need be, while maintaining the prototypical Monday through Friday (40-hour per week) job. Players could even take summer college courses wherever they call home.
Clites, who also worked as a golf operations manager at a local course, with peak business demand on the weekends, suggested there were ample local companies that also required full-time Friday through Sunday staffing. Creating a "conference" that operates solely on weekdays still gives players a chance to take part-time seasonal jobs with weekend-based hours. This "conference" also doubles as the place for student-athletes to play if they have no desire to work or intern in the summer. Though not encouraged, if they simply come to the league to become a better baseball player, the weekday is for them.
Simply freeing the schedule for players to pursue employment was not enough. Mahrt did not want potential recruits to have to "go it alone." With a wide range of local business contacts in tow, the league actively pairs players with suitable employers. League officers spend as much time and energy placing student-athletes with companies matching each individual's area of study as they do placing them on teams. The LCBL's competitive advantage over other leagues is its network of companies, the Find Your Way Program. In its first year of existence, over 20 companies from the local St. Louis area had players from the LCBL either interning, job shadowing, fast-tracked for interviews, or otherwise employed. The league also employs several sports management, marketing, broadcasting, and journalism majors as player-interns for gameday operations.
Branding The two-silhouette logo of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was inspired by a highway sign. Mahrt was driving to a Metro League game in 2012 when he took special notice of the imagery used to demarcate the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. It is something he had seen countless times, as the signs appear every five miles along the Missouri River. The trail's triangular logo evolved into the circular centerpiece in the Lewis & Clark Baseball League's primary wordmark.
Mahrt desired a name that paid homage to the rich history that surrounds St. Louis. But with a lofty ambition to draw talent from coast-to-coast, the moniker also needed to carry national recognition. Too locally responsive and it would not be approachable or understood by college players back east or out west. The journey of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase territory between 1804 and 1806, which started near St. Louis and traveled to the Pacific Ocean and back, perfectly encapsulated that aspired versatility.
The ampersand that commonly links Lewis to Clark has become the league's iconic shorthand logo, with an epsilon version prominently displayed on the front of every team's hat. The league chose to showcase one unifying logo in this case, a punctuation mark instead of unique, team-specific fonts or graphics. The colors differentiate each team from all others. For this reason, the "Amp[ersand] League" was another colloquial nickname for the LCBL.
Philosophy The LCBL was a unique summer collegiate league for many reasons, most notably for the option players had to use bats made of wood or metal. Since Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball solely use wood bats, nearly all other top-tier summer leagues exclusively use wood. Even with new BBCOR standards to reduce batted ball exit speed, using the technology of composite bats is perceived to inflate offensive power and thus misrepresent statistics to pro scouts. Thus, Major League Baseball only sponsors, and partially funds, wood-bat leagues. They do so as a common denominator metric to judge, compare, and project the value of both hitters and pitchers to the professional game.
Due to subtle differences in length-to-weight ratios, and the discernible feeling at contact, the potential exists for a difficult transition period from metal (college) to wood (pro). To avoid this steep learning curve, more and more collegiate athletes use the summer as acclimation time with the tools of their future trade. The unapologetic objective of premier leagues is to prepare their amateur players for the Major League First-Year Player Draft, using the summer as a professional proving ground. MLB seizes the logistical opportunity to get talent, professional-caliber equipment, and franchise representatives all in one place. The LCBL believed that such models compromised the spirit of the league's competitive nature, with each game acting too much like an audition or stepping stone.
Professional baseball is not on the horizon for every college player in need of a summer league, however. This is not to say that the LCBL has no desire to get players drafted. The commissioner's office simply understands its rarity. Making everyone swing wood bats just to accommodate the 9.7% that will play baseball at the next level was seen as painting with a broad stroke. For a player who rationally understands that he has hit his ceiling that upon the completion of his senior year he will never play competitive baseball again it makes all the sense in the world for him to swing a bat with collegiate specifications. Forcing such a player to limit their power and spend a summer using tools they will not operate back on campus is misguided. It can lead to a bigger re-adjustment period than not playing any offseason baseball at all.
The Lewis & Clark Baseball League aimed to be as elite as any rival wood-bat league, with a bigger onus on team success and without the MLB sponsorship. LCBL players stay in the moment and enjoy the summer for what it is: a competitive league with a coveted championship trophy, where players can swing the same type of bat they do in college.
The "Find Your Way" motto encouraged each individual to shape the league to fit their unique situation. Some players stubbornly see it as the ground floor for an unheralded pro career, and swing wood. Others tinker their swings, with the familiarity of metal, in an attempt to be the best collegiate player possible. There is no shame, or stigma, in either bat selection. Furthermore, success with composite materials stand as good of a chance to get professional attention. Those were the core beliefs of the Lewis & Clark Baseball League's Barrel Up Initiative, encouraging players to swing what is comfortable to them.
The league is not blind to the fact that young adults get excited to be seen by pro scouts. For this reason, the LCBL is in the preliminary talks with members of the St. Louis Cardinals front office, in hopes they might expand their presence in 2014. All these factors harken back to the decision to name the league after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their historical journey through the unknown epitomized the primary objective of the LCBL. For a college kid, post-baseball life is the great unknown. The league is tailored to the NCAA tagline: "There are over 380,000 student-athletes, and most of us go pro in something other than sports." With ample internship opportunities to use their time in St. Louis as a networking, personal marketing, and resume-building experience players leave the summer having found their way in more than just baseball wins and losses.
Teams At its peak, there were 12 teams in the Lewis & Clark Baseball League, up from four in the inaugural season. The league underwent an expansion to 12 teams in 2015. Teams were divided between two conferences Clark (weekdays) and Lewis (weekends) and evenly dispersed into four divisions. The divisions were named for the four major waterways in the St. Louis area: the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Meramec River, and River Des Peres.